OCEAN
EXPERT - On all things ocean, Emily Hoad is helping the Cleaner Ocean
Foundation fine tune SeaVax for eventual development in the English
Channel before launching onto the the international stage with free licenses
to partners worldwide as part of a World Ocean Anti-plastic Alliance (WOAA).
Emily graduated with a first in her masters report on White shark behaviour, and a 2:1 overall in Marine Biology from the
University of Southampton. She said: "It’s been an incredible four years and I’m
excited for the next chapter!"

ABOUT
EMILY

Emily
Hoad is a Marine Biologist and Oceanographer, bringing her considerable
expertise to the SeaVax project with a dedicated study of the state of the
art instrumentation that could be incorporated in a production SeaVax,
also including higher end sensors for research and development purposes.
She is working with the designers of the ocean cleaning craft to help
improve the efficiency of the collection of marine plastic.
Her mission is to define the objectives, help the engineers refine the
existing filtration stages and improve and develop future feedback loops,
so that SeaVax
is able to read the ocean and tune itself to the plastic
particles in the water,
in the process identifying and bypassing marine life.

This
is a gigantic undertaking for any organisation, but by applying her
expertise as part of a team effort, and with equal enthusiasm from all the
project members, Emily hopes to help the Foundation move the project on
from the conceptual and development stages to the open sea as a prototype.

The current state of microplastic pollution has been globally recognized as having reached a critical pinnacle. In 2010, 12 million metric tonnes of
plastic were estimated to be present in the ocean, with an addition of 8 million metric tonnes being inputted per annum. Of this, 236 thousand tonnes are composed of microplastics; defined as being less than 5mm.

Microplastics bear similarity in size and motility to marine microbiota known as
plankton and the presence of these microorganisms is essential to total ecosystem functioning. Fundamentally, they are composed of two separate taxa, namely
phytoplankton and zooplankton. Phytoplankton are the basis of all marine pelagic foodwebs, where solar energy is harnessed and converted into a primary organic energy source. Then the
zooplankton, as primary consumers of the phytoplankton, are responsible for the initial transfer of primary
energy to successive higher trophic levels.

The amount of ocean plastic is set to increase by a factor of 10 by 2020 and by 2050, it is predicted that at the current rate of input and accumulation, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish (by dry mass).

Whilst marine plastic is prevalent in surface waters, specifically 0 – 2.5m, traces have been found at depths of 11km below sea surface level (henceforth abbreviated to SSL), meaning synthetic polymers are contaminating even the most remote regions of
Earth.

Sources of marine microplastic are either primary: derived from many popular daily use
cosmetics (one bottle of facial exfoliant alone contains around 300,000 microbeads) or secondary; present from the degradation of macroplastics via ultraviolet radiation and mechanical weathering.

THE PROBLEM

Many marine organisms cannot distinguish plastic from food and often starve by the accumulation of non-digestible plastic in the gastric system.

The Great Pacific Gyre has the largest aggregation of plastics and it is estimated that 80% of seabirds feeding here have ingested plastic; other marine animals having 74% [dry mass] plastic debris-composed diets.

Toxin accumulation is occurring through successive trophic level transfer in marine food webs. With fish being the primary protein source for 16% of the global population, it means that microplastics are prevalent in many human diets. For example, one 6-oyster serving, it is estimated 50 particles of microplastic will be heedlessly consumed.

Components of plastics are carcinogenic. For example, vinyl chloride, the major component of the common plastic
PVC, is a known human
carcinogen.

THE SOLUTION

Tackling the problem from the source, which ultimately involves removing microplastics from the ocean without harming the extant biology.

SeaVax will be a fully autonomous machine that has the ability to differentiate and separate marine biota from man-made polymer. It will collect micro to macro sized plastic via non-invasive ocean filtration with minimal –ve impact for maximal +ve effect.

AQUARIST -
In her first year of Marine Biology at Southampton University, Emily travelled
to Dubai for the winter holidays and volunteered in the Lost Chambers Aquarium at Atlantis, The Palm, Dubai. For two weeks
she was an assistant aquarist, aiding the running and maintenance of both large and small
exhibits, as well as front of house; building on her previous internship experience.

Emily
became involved in the SeaVax project in the summer of 2018. She will be
helping to develop the filtration mechanism of SeaVax working with
computer and instrument technologists to mesh biology with engineering in
the quest to clean up our oceans without causing undue harm to marine
organisms. Conservation is the name of the game.